Re: [PLUG] Microsoft - Key Linux contributor!
On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 12:37 AM, Rahul Sundaram methe...@gmail.com wrote: On 04/05/2012 08:14 AM, Mayuresh wrote: ... snip ... Having said that, I don't expect them to show up high in the stats in the upcoming years because maintenance work in such drivers isn't that high typically. What it does, is a change in approach within MS in some ways and that there is demand from MS customers who want to run Linux as a guest. Succinctly put; really sums it up well. -- Arun Khan ___ Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List
Re: [PLUG] Microsoft - Key Linux contributor!
On Wed, Apr 04, 2012 at 09:13:20PM -0600, Kaustubh Gadkari wrote: love of all things FOSS - in fact, they were almost certainly driven by their economic baseline. Why does that make their kernel contributions bad (for the lack of a better word)? Not at all. Did I say anything that suggests that? RedHat is a $1bn+ company. It is also one of the largest kernel contributors. Their existence is dependent on the kernel and the system built around it working. Would you argue that their contributions are an illusion, since their contributions are driven by No, because the fact that their business depends on Linux is known. And for the same reason, I'd not call MS as key contributor just based on numbers as how much they depend on Linux is clear as well. In both the cases I'd not use the number of patches as the basis to measure their intent. Mayuresh ___ Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List
Re: [PLUG] Microsoft - Key Linux contributor!
On Thu, Apr 05, 2012 at 08:19:20AM +0530, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote: If you see that the business interest actually translates into requiring to contribute kernel code, aren't they anyway enhancing the kernel ? Never denied that. The term is key contributor and it is arrived at on the basis of some count, which is questionable. An analogy: if you are working in a software project, can you call someone who did maximum commit operations in your source code repository as key contributor? If yes, I'd just opt out of the debate ... Mayuresh. ___ Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List
Re: [PLUG] Microsoft - Key Linux contributor!
On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 6:45 PM, Mayuresh mayur...@acm.org wrote: On Thu, Apr 05, 2012 at 08:19:20AM +0530, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote: If you see that the business interest actually translates into requiring to contribute kernel code, aren't they anyway enhancing the kernel ? Never denied that. The term is key contributor and it is arrived at on the basis of some count, which is questionable. And that is what I alluded to. The key is a measure of significance or, it could be a measure of sheer LoC. I'd probably lean towards the former. What I find a bit amusing is that this entire MSFT presence is diverting attention from the fact that embedded folks viz. Samsung and others are beginning to make their presence felt on the list. -- sankarshan mukhopadhyay http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog/ ___ Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List
Re: [PLUG] Microsoft - Key Linux contributor!
On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 6:41 PM, Mayuresh mayur...@acm.org wrote: No, because the fact that their business depends on Linux is known. And for the same reason, I'd not call MS as key contributor just based on numbers as how much they depend on Linux is clear as well. Linux is one of the business(es) Red Hat is involved in. And, there are a significant number of technologies where MSFT requires to ensure that things are interoperable. The kernel isn't that unimportant in an MSFT scheme of things. -- sankarshan mukhopadhyay http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog/ ___ Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List
Re: [PLUG] Microsoft - Key Linux contributor!
On Thu, Apr 05, 2012 at 07:02:28PM +0530, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote: On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 6:41 PM, Mayuresh mayur...@acm.org wrote: No, because the fact that their business depends on Linux is known. And for the same reason, I'd not call MS as key contributor just based on numbers as how much they depend on Linux is clear as well. Linux is one of the business(es) Red Hat is involved in. And, there are a significant number of technologies where MSFT requires to ensure that things are interoperable. The kernel isn't that unimportant in an MSFT scheme of things. Exactly. Dependent on and not that unimportant are the words you used, which is what I am trying to say is the difference. Mayuresh. ___ Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List
Re: [PLUG] Microsoft - Key Linux contributor!
On 04/05/2012 08:14 AM, Mayuresh wrote: You might patch a thing n times just because it broke n times, does not make you a better contributor than someone who contributed fewer times though with better quality and functionality. Just the count is not a measure of intent. Patching something n number of times doesn't increase code count. For most part, the hyper-v driver code they contributed is now much less lines of code due to the amount of revisions that has happened in the staging area over the last several months. This is quite common for drivers written in house by commercial organizations contributing newly to Linux kernel. So instead of a inflated count, what you are actually seeing is a lowered count. They are unlikely to be doing it to help Linux/OSS prosper or something. They contributed to areas where they had a business interest. Hence I called it an illusion. I don't think calling it illusion is appropriate. All commercial vendors who contribute to Linux, do it out of a business interest. It is not a charity or donation. In the case of Microsoft, their primary work is adding Hyper-V driver to support Linux systems as a guest in their virtualization platform and since the kernel is GPL, they are legally required to publish patches anyway and merging them does make it easier to use their solutions. Does it advance their own interests? Absolutely. Does it benefit Linux on the whole? Yes, to the extend any driver benefits Linux. It is rather similar to say driver support that HP or Broadcom contributes because it sells their hardware more. Having said that, I don't expect them to show up high in the stats in the upcoming years because maintenance work in such drivers isn't that high typically. What it does, is a change in approach within MS in some ways and that there is demand from MS customers who want to run Linux as a guest. Rahul ___ Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List
[PLUG] Microsoft - Key Linux contributor!
http://www.cio.in/news/microsoft-counted-key-linux-contributor-245792012 Just numeric illusion I suppose. Mayuresh ___ Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List
Re: [PLUG] Microsoft - Key Linux contributor!
On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 11:58 AM, Mayuresh mayur...@acm.org wrote: http://www.cio.in/news/microsoft-counted-key-linux-contributor-245792012 Just numeric illusion I suppose. Why? If they contributed those many changes to the kernel, then so be it - they deserve to counted as a contributor. It is what it is. Kaustubh Mayuresh ___ Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List -- Kaustubh Gadkari ___ Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List
Re: [PLUG] Microsoft - Key Linux contributor!
On Wed, Apr 04, 2012 at 12:59:39PM -0600, Kaustubh Gadkari wrote: On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 11:58 AM, Mayuresh mayur...@acm.org wrote: http://www.cio.in/news/microsoft-counted-key-linux-contributor-245792012 Just numeric illusion I suppose. Why? If they contributed those many changes to the kernel, then so be it - they deserve to counted as a contributor. It is what it is. No problems with that. (Look I am not a stereotype MS basher.) All that I mean is the numbers do not necessarily indicate _intent_ to contribute. You might patch a thing n times just because it broke n times, does not make you a better contributor than someone who contributed fewer times though with better quality and functionality. Just the count is not a measure of intent. They are unlikely to be doing it to help Linux/OSS prosper or something. They contributed to areas where they had a business interest. Hence I called it an illusion. The fact that it helped Linux is anyway most welcome. Mayuresh. ___ Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List
Re: [PLUG] Microsoft - Key Linux contributor!
On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 8:14 AM, Mayuresh mayur...@acm.org wrote: No problems with that. (Look I am not a stereotype MS basher.) All that I mean is the numbers do not necessarily indicate _intent_ to contribute. This is an interesting way of putting it. The numbers for everyone would indicate that they see significant business value (economic drivers) in contributing to the enhancement of the kernel. For some it could be getting things to be interoperable, for others it might be to do innovation and, then again, there is a strong overlap between those two perspectives. You might patch a thing n times just because it broke n times, does not make you a better contributor than someone who contributed fewer times though with better quality and functionality. Just the count is not a measure of intent. The count is a measure of investment. And, for publicly traded large corporations, making significant investments means a policy shift. It wasn't that long ago that the current CEO considered Linux a disease (I think it was 'cancer' as was told). Cut to today, it does make for a different picture. They are unlikely to be doing it to help Linux/OSS prosper or something. They contributed to areas where they had a business interest. Hence I called it an illusion. If you see that the business interest actually translates into requiring to contribute kernel code, aren't they anyway enhancing the kernel ? -- sankarshan mukhopadhyay http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog/ ___ Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List
Re: [PLUG] Microsoft - Key Linux contributor!
On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 8:44 PM, Mayuresh mayur...@acm.org wrote: On Wed, Apr 04, 2012 at 12:59:39PM -0600, Kaustubh Gadkari wrote: On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 11:58 AM, Mayuresh mayur...@acm.org wrote: http://www.cio.in/news/microsoft-counted-key-linux-contributor-245792012 Just numeric illusion I suppose. Why? If they contributed those many changes to the kernel, then so be it - they deserve to counted as a contributor. It is what it is. No problems with that. (Look I am not a stereotype MS basher.) All that I mean is the numbers do not necessarily indicate _intent_ to contribute. You might patch a thing n times just because it broke n times, does not make you a better contributor than someone who contributed fewer times though with better quality and functionality. Just the count is not a measure of intent. I think the count _is_ an intent to contribute. MS engineers might have contributed several patches for one bugfix/improvement - I haven't read the changelogs. But, the point is, so what? If it is an area of the kernel that needed fixing/improving and the MS engineers did it, then it needs to be acknowledged. Sometimes a fix/improvement happens incrementally. The MS fixes were certainly not because of MS' love of all things FOSS - in fact, they were almost certainly driven by their economic baseline. Why does that make their kernel contributions bad (for the lack of a better word)? They are unlikely to be doing it to help Linux/OSS prosper or something. They contributed to areas where they had a business interest. Hence I called it an illusion. RedHat is a $1bn+ company. It is also one of the largest kernel contributors. Their existence is dependent on the kernel and the system built around it working. Would you argue that their contributions are an illusion, since their contributions are driven by the economic baseline as much as the need/want to evangelize FOSS? My point is, the contributions are there, they were vetted by the head honchos in charge of the kernel and they help enhance the kernel. IMHO, MS's intentions are immaterial. Kaustubh The fact that it helped Linux is anyway most welcome. Mayuresh. ___ Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List -- Kaustubh Gadkari ___ Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List
